Quotes of the day

posted at 10:51 pm on January 16, 2013 by Allahpundit

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus wasted no time in attacking President Obama’s new gun control proposals.

“President Obama’s series of gun control measures amount to an executive power grab that may please his political base but will not solve the problems at hand. He paid lip service to our fundamental constitutional rights, but took actions that disregard the 2nd Amendment and the legislative process,” Priebus said, attacking Obama for including executive orders as part of the response.

***

Far from acting as if his work was now done, the president made clear that he is fully invested in seeing his agenda realized — and fully prepared to lead a national movement to loosen the grip of resignation and cynicism in the face of brutality and carnage…

Most heartening of all was the tone the president took. He did not cast himself as an evenhanded umpire far above the fray, handing down ideas that all people of good will would inevitably accept. He acknowledged that the battle ahead would be difficult. He predicted he would have to fight the lie that his plan constituted “a tyrannical assault on liberty.” And he sought to mobilize a new effort to counteract the entrenched power of those who have dictated submissiveness in the face of bloodshed.

“Enough,” Obama declared, insisting that change would come only “if the American people demand it.”

***

It’s the second time in just the past 72 hours where Obama has chosen to ask for everything he wants and leave little (initial) room for compromise. The first time came Monday when the President sought to seize the rhetorical high ground from Republicans by casting the raising of the debt ceiling as something on which he refused to negotiate under any circumstances.

That approach is a marked change from Obama’s negotiating position in past legislative fights in which, Democrats often complained, he negotiated with himself — starting with an initial offer somewhere close to where he wanted to end up and then watched as Republicans pulled him further and further to the ideological right before the deal was done…

His base will love it. Republicans will hate it. The question now is whether it will work to get something done.

***

Rapidly accelerating a process that began during his campaign, Obama since November has confidently picked fights with Republicans—and challenged the most conservative members of his own party—on a broad range of foreign-policy and domestic social issues. Besides gun control these include immigration, the pace of withdrawal from Afghanistan and the nomination of Republican senator Chuck Hagel as Defense secretary, a red flag for the GOP’s neo-conservative wing.

Obama in effect is answering a question that liberal political thinkers have asked since the 1970s: how would the Democratic Party behave if it could diminish its dependence on conservative white voters? His forceful moves on all these controversial fronts represent a calculated gamble that the evolution of the US electorate has reached a critical tipping point…

On all of these issues, the president is simply “following his coalition,” said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, now perhaps the leading liberal group in Washington. “The point I make, in my role [of talking to] the whole coalition, is there’s the possibility of a progressive [electoral] majority that sustains a lot of good things for everybody in it, but we have to deliver [for our voters].”

***

“The NRA is continually trumpeting [that] they increased their membership by ‘x’ amount in this month,” Gibbs said on Morning Joe today. “The president has the most exciting campaign apparatus ever built. It’s time to turn that loose. It’s time to turn that loose for something more than just an election. If the NRA’s got a list, then Obama for America has a bigger list and it is time to get activated again.”…

Gibbs thinks the Obama campaign can bury the NRA. “This list will get active and it will do things if the person in charge of this list asks them to do so,” he said, suggesting that Obama campaign volunteers should “get on that old pair of shoes that they knocked on doors with and get out there and do something.”

***

You may agree 100 percent with the president’s position on gun control, but his stagey histrionics, his endless reliance upon human props, his cheap sloganeering, his emotionally driven hectoring: all of that bespeaks a very deep contempt for his audience, which is the American people. If he really believes that surrounding himself with adorable little tots is a substitute for substantive arguments for well-thought-out policy proposals, he thinks that the people — you people — are a bunch of rubes. Unhappily, 51 percent of the American people are happy to endorse his low view of them. There is something peculiar to political enthusiasts, a phenomenon I observed at both conventions this year: People in political audiences know that they are being manipulated, cynically and professionally — and they enjoy it. Obama’s admirers look up to him because he looks down on them, not in spite of the fact. There is something more at play than the mere admiration of stagecraft…

The magic of theater is that is has the power to overwhelm thought: For a moment, you forget that you are watching actors reciting lines that they have memorized and making scripted movements, and you are taken into the world of the play. Obama’s politics of histrionics — the little children, the Sandra Flukes, the imperial stage dressing — also is conceived with the goal of overwhelming thought. That tells you something about the president and what he stands for. The continued success of this traveling medicine show of a presidency tells you something about the American people.

***

House Republicans have backed themselves into an awkward place on the debt ceiling: unwilling to vote to lift it, but equally unwilling to take the blame for not lifting it. They’ve been looking for an escape from the dilemma. In 2011 Obama cut them a face-saving deal. This time, he’s insisted, no deal. His White House has rejected every brain wave that might de-escalate the confrontation, including the notorious “trillion-dollar coin” concept. His strategy—as he said at his Jan. 14 press conference—has been to reduce the Republicans’ options to a stark binary pair: “They can act responsibly and pay America’s bills or they can act irresponsibly and put America through another economic crisis.” Or, in other words: They can blow up the credit of the United States—or they can yield. That’s the choice, there’s nothing else on the menu.

Facing that stark choice, Republicans in Congress and the country have indicated to the party base that they will probably have to yield. The president has insisted, however, that Republicans will receive nothing in return for yielding…

A government shutdown would end disastrously for the congressional GOP. Which is precisely why Obama is goading the Republicans to do it. In the words of Club for Growth president Chris Chocola: “They [Republican House members] think this is the only way to get Obama’s attention.” That, of course, is just what President Obama wants them to think—so they’ll do just what President Obama wants them to do. What he wants is not a deal—not anymore, or anyway, not now. What he wants is a reckless Republican overreach, leading to public outrage, leading to a Republican rout. The president has been often quoted as saying he wants to “break the fever.” Translated into plainer English: he wants to break his opponents.

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Comments

you old-testament savages don’t deserve this brilliant, brave President we have. It only heartens me to know how much America hates your kind and showed it by rejecting you in November.

DBear on January 16, 2013 at 11:38 PM

Something I posted earlier on another thread, but it seems relevant to DoucheBear…

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Seriously, my fellow HotAirians… why do you engage statist idiots like SesquiPudpuller and RubberDick? They only advocate for citizen disarmament because they know THEY will not have to knock on my door to relieve me of my weapons. They are cowardly shills for wannabe tyrants… the same people that slammed the doors on ovens and turned the spades on mass graves in bygone days.

Forget the Constitution. Forget the Bill of Rights. I don’t need them. My right to defend my family is God-given, and I do not ask permission from petty dictators and bureaucrats to do so. If the gun had never been invented, I would own a sword or an axe or a stout oaken club.

Piers Morgan continually tried to get Dana Loesch and Scottie Hughes to say they

had a right to a tank,

trying to use an extreme example to make both of them look extreme. And in response Loesch continually said the 2nd amendment protects our right to bear firearms

– and if a tank is a considered a firearm then sure.

Obviously it’s not, but what Morgan was trying to do was to make her admit that she’s ‘interpreting’ the Constitution to make his point that if you don’t need a tank, then why do you need an AR-15 or something.

And it went on from there. Dana even tried to explain to Piers a thing or two about ‘assault rifles’ – or rather why they aren’t assault rifles but Piers just kept wondering why she ‘needs’ something that can shoot 100 bullets in a minute.

All in all Dana Loesch and Scottie Hughes stood their ground as Piers tried to bully them through the whole interview.

Watch the the full interview below:
===================================

Facing that stark choice, Republicans in Congress and the country have indicated to the party base that they will probably have to yield

So again it’s…

but Next Time By God….We’ll have ’em by the throat! THAT’s Where we make our stand!

It’s tedious. You’re cred is long gone.
Go back to surrendering…we’ll handle you next time you’re up for reelect – while you’re pretending to be “conservative” to keep your job (assuming it hasn’t already been eliminated through “Executive Order” by then).

but Next Time By God….We’ll have ‘em by the throat! THAT’s Where we make our stand!

It’s tedious. You’re cred is long gone.
Go back to surrendering…we’ll handle you next time you’re up for reelect – while you’re pretending to be “conservative” to keep your job (assuming it hasn’t already been eliminated through “Executive Order” by then).

can’t read any more of these QOTD’s for a while.

Tim_CA on January 17, 2013 at 1:16 AM

It’s difficult to put into words just how lame Boehner and those who still support him are.

1) We ask that the government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living.

2) The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within its confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand: … an end to the power of the financial interests.

3) We demand profit sharing in big business.

4) We demand a broad extension of care for the aged.

5) We demand … the greatest possible consideration of small business in the purchases of the national, state, and municipal governments.

6) In order to make possible every capable and industrious (citizen) the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our entire system of public education. … We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents. …

7) The government must undertake the improvement of public health — by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor … by the greatest possible support for all clubs concerned with the physical education of youth.

8) (We) combat the … materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of The Common Good Before The Individual Good.

Gibbs thinks the Obama campaign can bury the NRA. “This list will get active and it will do things if the person in charge of this list asks them to do so,” he said, suggesting that Obama campaign volunteers should “get on that old pair of shoes that they knocked on doors with and get out there and do something.”

Yes, put on your boots, libs, and go pound on all of your neighbors doors, tell them they aught to be ashamed of themselves and demand that they turn over all of their guns! You’ll be soooo popular! LOL!

They can blow up the credit of the United States—or they can yield. That’s the choice, there’s nothing else on the menu.

Facing that stark choice, Republicans in Congress and the country have indicated to the party base that they will probably have to yield.

Unfortunately for the American people, especially younger ones and those yet unborn, that isn’t even an accurate representation of the choice. When people have too much debt and are suffering the best thing they can do is to stop applying for more credit cards. Obama is nothing but a con man and the Republicans are either absolutely, totally incompetent or else they are in on the con.

Yes, put on your boots, libs, and go pound on all of your neighbors doors, tell them they aught to be ashamed of themselves and demand that they turn over all of their guns! You’ll be soooo popular! LOL!

FloatingRock on January 17, 2013 at 2:02 AM

It would be highly entertaining to see them try – I encourage them to do so! :)

the gop has been in lockstep with the democrats for the past 4 years.
we are getting our butts kicked everyday, and they don’t even have the courage to fight back.
the battle is too lopsided. it’s no fun to watch.

going to be a nice today, before the cold comes in. do some work. then go out on the ol’ kayak.

That poseur has yet to keep ONE “promise” he has made, not only as a sleazy, lying, unqualified candidate, but as a U.S. Senator, and POTUS … Except of course that “energy rates will necessarily skyrocket”. (you aint seen nothin’ yet in that arena)

Sadly, the references to Fascism, i.e., Ernst Röhm, Benito Mussolini, Nicolae Ceaușescu, etc. (read a book) does NOT refer to the NRA – as some of us know what happened to those Fascists, but most Americans have no idea who they were. It refers to the despotic manner in which the man-child in mom-jeans “leads” the country.
No retreat, NO peace.
~(Ä)~

I have an online petition to the president to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to each of the six adults who died protecting the children at Sandy Hook on Dec. 14. I need 100,000 signatures by Feb. 15 to get a response from the President.

The petition is without any politics or partisanship, and I need help not only with signatures but also others knowing the petition exists. Can everyone please help?